The gay rights disaster in India

When a government opens its arms to a minority group, the minority in question justifiably assumes that the future will be brighter. Not so in the marvelous contradiction of a country that is India.

Today’s reversal of a High court ruling in 2009 legalizing homosexuality by the Supreme Court of India left me scratching my head and feeling empathy for India’s homosexuals. I do not have any gay friends, but I firmly believe that it is nobody’s business to criminalize sexual preference. My straight friends think otherwise, but this is India we are talking about, not Saudi Arabia. As a spiritual humanist, I cannot fathom what kind of catastrophe can possibly come from sex between consenting, same gender adults. Unwanted pregnancy is ruled out, STDs can be prevented in this day and age – so what is the problem?

The original law criminalizing gay sex goes back over 150 years ago when the Brits ruled India. OK, let me just say it. Almost nothing good came from 19th century British administration anywhere in the world. OK. Out of my system. Now coming back to the original law, it not only banned gay sex but also banned anal sex with a punishment equivalent to that for rape (WTH?!) and even thought a married man getting a blowjob was a punishable crime (Double WTH!!!!) because these were against the ‘order of nature’ (yeah, because they were experts in the ‘order of nature’). Additionally of course, our friendly religious moral police officers hailed the verdict and even cautioned that legalizing homosexuality would result in legalizing bestiality. Note to confused readers:- The religious leader who said that is a first class IDIOT.

The glimmer of hope is that legislature can delete this section of the Indian Penal Code but who knows how long that will take. Chin up LGBT community of India – there are more people on your side than you think.